Product Description

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Did you know that your heart is beautiful even if it's cracked? Dare to share the abundance of your brokenness! Pairing her stunning photographs with selections from her best-selling books, Voskamp encourages you to G.I.F.T. Be the Gift includes:

Publisher's Description

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Be the Gift, by New York Timesbestselling author Ann Voskamp, will challenge and encourage you to listen to God and look for opportunities to be His gift to others.

The idea that even in the depths of our own brokenness God can use each of us to be a gift to someone else is powerfulthat He makes each of us enough to give to someone else. Just as powerful is the realization that in becoming Gods gifts to others, our lives become more abundant: "Maybe the only abundant way forward is always to give forward." Ideas this powerful need to be put into action.

Live out the messages in Anns bestselling books, The Broken Way and One Thousand Gifts, with Be the Gift, a practical guide that takes you through each day of the year with ways to bless those around you.

Featuring selections from The Broken Way and Anns blog, beautifully designed quotations, inspirational verses, and Anns signature photography, this gorgeous book will be an incredible gift to any loved one. It also includes pages of perforated gift tags in the back to include with a meal dropped off for an ailing friend or a pie baked for a friendly neighbor or even passed to a friend with a much-loved book.

One Thousand Gifts encouraged readers to live a life of thanksgiving and to chronicle the gifts from God in their everyday lives. The Broken Way reminded that freedom is not found beyond fear and pain, but within it. Now Be the Gift will unpack and chronicle the next step to really live in communionopening ourselves up to givenness in spite of our brokenness.

Author Bio

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Ann Voskamp is the wife of one fine, down-to-earth farmer; a book-reading mama to a posse of seven; and the author of the New York Times bestsellers One Thousand Gifts, which has sold more than one million copies and has been translated into more than twenty-one languages, and The Broken Way.

Named by Christianity Today as one of fifty women most shaping culture and the church today, Ann knows unspoken brokenness and big country skies and an intimacy with God that touches wounded places. Millions do life with her at her daily photographic online journal, one of the top 10 most widely read Christian sites: www.annvoskamp.com

Author is master at words that evoke images, emotions and a desire to draw closer to God.

November 1, 2017

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If you've never read any of Ann Voskamp's books the description of the book pales dramatically to her actual written word. She's a master at words that evoke images, emotions and a desire to draw closer to God. Her writing is raw, heart-felt, stirring, shocking and transparent. She allows us glimpses into her own heart to help us better understand the heart of God. This lovely book is filled with photographs of her farm, home, and family. From a bowl of cherries to the wheat fields to a child's toes we are drawn into her intimate world. This book is a devotional book with a challenge. The challenge to spend 60 days giving of ourselves to a hurting world. She invites us to give sacrificially as Christ gives to us. She challenges us to go outside of our comfort zone and use our imagination to find ways to "pay it forward" to someone who is hurting. She gets down to the gritty realities of our hesitation to do good for those who rub us the wrong way and asks us to give of ourselves to them in a meaningful way. The end of the book has pages where the reader can write how they lived given in that day - for 60 days. Then there are 60 heart challenge ideas on how we can pour out ourselves to be a gift to others.

I received this book from BookLook but was not required to write a positive review.

Ann Voskamp's new book Be the Gift is not an easy read, I think, however, it is one with an important message for those who are able to read it.

Ann's style appears to be a collaboration of story and parable, honest vulnerability and hard truth. It's this hard truth that makes this book so very valuable.

I loved Ann's honest look at brokenness, her passionate pointing back to Christ, communion, and the church when it comes to the hard and the messy in life. This message of hard and messy things needs to be paired with the beauty of giving, koinonia, and eucharisteo to be real in our messy,human lives. In light of Ann's gift in storytelling and parable this message comes across in a way that blends this truth with everyday experience and emotion in a venue that makes her words seem tangible.

That said, I know some will (and do) struggle with Voskamp's writing style.With her unconventional presentation, wordy vocabulary, and unusual transitions some readers may find Voskamp's work difficult to track with which is okay, not everyone learns from a storytelling perspective. Voskamp's work requires patience and alertness (this is definitely not a midnight binge read) to absorb the full impact of her words, not to mention the possibility of a second read through.

The book, itself, seems to be aware of the weightiness of its words and the time required to process their meaning. As a result, the text is inter-spaced with beautifully shot pictures of life and light that give balance to the message which surrounds them.

Overall, I appreciated Be the Gift and found its message to be one that I will return to again.

4 out of 5 stars

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commissions 16 CFR, Part 255 : Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Two of my favorite books are One Thousand Gifts and The Greatest Gift (an Advent devo!) by the popular Ann Voskamp. She is a beautiful, beautiful word-weaver and her messages are profound. But somehow this book just didn't do it for me. Be the Gift is a gift-type book and collection of passages from previous books. The message is for all of us to be a self-gift to others (love the Theology of the Body implied there!) no matter how broken we feel. That by giving, we can not only heal and help others but ourselves as well. Her reflections are always touching and gorgeous, but this particular book just felt somewhat redundant which make the message lose some of its lackluster. It was also a bit confusing because the reflections were not separated by dates or chapters so you didn't quite know when you were in a new story or section (just a fancy capital letter beginning the story each time.). I think in some ways, this is still a rich book for meditation, and I love the 'extras' in it-- space for journaling your giving, ideas of intentional ways to give, and even some cute tags to add to food gifts for others. But overall, I found myself less drawn in than I usually am with her books. 3 out of 5 stars.

Be The Gift by Ann Voskamp is a book that I can't recommend enough! I was so excited when it came in the mail and it has far exceeded my expectations. First of all, before even reading it, the book itself is simply beautiful. It's a nice hardback book with a silk attached bookmark. The photography is breathtaking. I enjoyed just flipping through the book and looking at the beautiful pictures.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I was mostly expecting a type of devotional book with designated reading per day, but this book is way better than that. You can read one page, two page or twenty-five. You can set your own speed and read as much or as little as you want in each setting.

This is a book that is much needed in today's day and age. Instead of focusing on your own pain, heartache, trials and whatever else you are facing, you can find the healing and happiness you need through helping others.

Thank you to the Best Selling Author Ann Voskamp for a beautiful book! I will definitely be checking out her other writings!

More about the book:

Did you know that your heart is beautiful even if it's cracked? Dare to share the abundance of your brokenness! Pairing her stunning photographs with selections from her best-selling books, Voskamp encourages you to G.I.F.T. Be the Giftincludes: